Lunar Farming: Achieving Maximum Exploration of Space

So, you want to visit the CELSS farms here in Luna City? I’m a farmer in that facility, and I’d be happy to show them to you. Perhaps we can complete our visit before midnight, when the year 2020 begins. (Because the lunar day is 29.530589 Earth days long, we keep Greenwich Earth time here.) As a matter of fact, we can celebrate New Year’s Eve with a meal in the mess hall based almost entirely on food from the CELSS farms. What is the significance of the CELSS acronym, you ask? It stands for Controlled Ecological (or Environment) Life-Support System. Fundamentally, it is a bioregenerative life-support system (which could be called BLISS!). On our way to the farms, let’s make a brief stop in the Earth-observation room. From our location here in the Sea of Serenity, Earth hangs in a black sky 60° above the horizon and slightly west of south. It is always there! With a diameter 3.67 times and an area almost 14 times that of the moon as it appears from Earth, Earth is truly a spectacular sight in the sky. It is fascinating to watch it go through its phases. The Earth is always full at lunar midnight, and it was full on Christmas this year (2019). When the sun appears close to the Earth, the Earth is a thin crescent: a new Earth. Once or twice a year, the sun moves behind the Earth, producing an eclipse. The sun’s rays, refracted by Earth’s atmosphere, form a red ring around the Earth; a circular sunset, one might say, that produces a red glow here on the moon. It’s fascinating to watch the Earth rotate and to observe cyclones and other storms moving across its surface. As everyone knows, our CELSS farms in Luna City are based on photosynthesis in which carbon dioxide, water, and minerals are transformed with the help of light energy into food and oxygen. The water transpired by the plants is condensed in pure form, providing much more water than the inhabitants of Luna City actually need. Furthermore, the